Creating a Consolidated Balance sheet displayed by Accounting Period in NetSuite

When using a NetSuite Instance with multiple subsidiaries, clients will want to see a consolidated balance sheet of all the subsidiaries. NetSuite, however, does not allow users to sort a Consolidated Balance Sheet by the ‘Accounting Period’ column, despite allowing this while viewing the Balance Sheet for a single subsidiary. In this post, I will walk through how to create a custom Balance Sheet that allows users to see consolidated balances for up to four historical periods.

While looking into this originally, a colleague pointed me to SuiteAnswer #73807. I found that it was helpful to a degree, but did not quite offer the full solution I was looking for.

How to customize

To begin, navigate to Reports > Financial > Balance Sheet. This will give you the regular, consolidated balance sheet. In the bottom left-hand corner, there is ‘Refresh’ and, next to it, a ‘Customize’ button. Select ‘Customize’.

Once in the Customization window, navigate to ‘Edit Columns’. Once here, scroll down to the Alternate Period Range Type field, and select ‘Relative to Today’s Date’. A new field, Alternate Period Range, appears underneath. For the first column, select ‘This period’. This will display the balances as they currently stand.

Next, notice the ‘Add Fields’ column on the left of the screen. In this, expand Financial and select field Amount. This will add another column to the balance sheet screen in the middle of the page. This is shown below:

Once the new column has been added, select those same values for Alternate Period Range, but instead select ‘Last Period’ for Alternate Period Range.

Continue those steps two more times, selecting ‘Period Before Last’ and ‘Same Period Last Fiscal Quarter’ for the 3rd and 4th columns, respectively. This allows users to see back 4 periods, so it it is currently October, the user can see balances for September, August, and July, all at a consolidated level.

The picture below shows what it will look like, filled in with example numbers:

For more information on this topic or others related to NetSuite, contact RSM at [email protected] or by phone at 855.437.7202.